Scripture Readings
The Season After Pentecost
Proper 18 (23) in Year C
For the Sunday during 4 through 10 September
Scripture readings are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV® ©1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. All rights reserved.
Alternate One:
Old Testament
Psalm
Alternate Two:
Old Testament
Psalm
Epistle Reading
Gospel Reading
Old Testament (Alternate One)
This is the word that came to
Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there
I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house,
and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping
from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it
into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Then the word of the LORD came
to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter
does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce
that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed,
and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will
relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And
if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to
be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and
does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended
to do for it.
“Now therefore say to the people
of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD
says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a
plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you,
and reform your ways and your actions.’ But they will reply,
‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us
will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.’”
—Jeremiah 18:1-11, NIV
Go
to the top of this pagePsalm (Alternate One)
O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD
You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s
womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains
of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
—Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18, NIV
Old Testament (Alternate Two)
See, I set before you today
life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you
today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to
keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase,
and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering
to possess.
But if your heart turns away and
you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to
other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you
will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land
you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
This day I call heaven and earth
as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and
death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and
your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God,
listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your
life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to
give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
—Deuteronomy 30:15-20, NIV
Psalm (Alternate Two)
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel
of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day
and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of
the righteous.
For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will
perish.
—Psalm 1, NIV
Epistle
Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus,
and Timothy our brother,
To Philemon our dear friend and
fellow worker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow
soldier and to the church that meets in your home:
Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank my God as I remember
you in my prayers, because I hear about your faith in the Lord
Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be
active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding
of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me
great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed
the hearts of the saints.
Therefore, although in Christ I
could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I
appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old
man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus—I appeal to you
for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.
Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful
both to you and to me.
I am sending him—who is my very
heart—back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me so
that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains
for the gospel. But I did not want to do anything without your
consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not
forced. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little
while was that you might have him back for good—no longer as
a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very
dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother
in the Lord.
So if you consider me a partner,
welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong
or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, am writing this
with my own hand. I will pay it back—not to mention that you
owe me your very self. I do wish, brother, that I may have some
benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ. Confident
of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even
more than I ask.
—Philemon 1-21, NIV
Gospel
Large crowds were traveling
with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to
me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children,
his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be
my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow
me cannot be my disciple.
“Suppose one of you wants to build
a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to
see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the
foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it
will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was
not able to finish.’
“Or suppose a king is about to
go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and
consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the
one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able,
he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way
off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of
you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
—Luke 14:25-33, NIV
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